The U.S. government will guarantee the defense of Polish airspace for up to two years by placing U.S. Army Patriot PAC-3 batteries in Poland until that country receives the first two of its own eight batteries. Poland selected the Patriot system last April, in preference to the MBDA France/Thales Sol-Air Moyenne Portée/Terrestre (SAMP/T) system firing Aster 30 missiles. Poland’s PAC-3 batteries will each have three fire units, loaded with a mix of the Raytheon PAC-2 GEM-T and Lockheed Martin PAC-3 missile segment enhancement (MSE) missiles.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin is probably the one person responsible for Poland’s decision to purchase the PAC-3 system,” said a defense consultant based in Warsaw. “Until the invasion of Ukraine and the series of moves showcasing Putin’s increasingly irrational decision-making process, Poland was willing to opt for a slower approach that could have transferred a lot of technology and more production contracts to local industry. But deliveries had to be made sooner rather than later, and the decision involved close cooperation with the U.S.” Late in the selection process, Poland decided to change the acquisition from a commercial to an intergovernmental agreement. Poland’s deputy defense minister Czeslaw Mroczek said that the Patriot system had been selected “because of technical, industrial, military, and political reasons.”
The Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) was also offered to Poland by the industrial consortium comprising Lockheed Marin (LM) and MBDA’s companies in Germany and Italy. But although this offer was not taken up, Poland’s PAC-3 system will employ the same MSE missiles that form part of MEADS. The MSE features a larger, more powerful rocket motor, larger fins and other structural modifications that allow it to adjust its flight path to intercept incoming maneuvering warheads. It also extends the range of the system when using previous model missiles by 50 percent.
Further, Raytheon will develop a new 360-degree radar set to replace the system’s previous-generation radar network. The competing system included a 360-degree radar, but these were conventional, mechanically rotating arrays. Raytheon’s solution will be to employ three active electronically scanning array (AESA) panels using the latest Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology. The output from the three arrays is then combined into an integrated single air data picture using algorithms developed in parallel with the radar set.
